90
PARTISAN REVIEW
ity, it would seem, demands a hefty dose of malevolence on the distaff
side.
Now, such an idea would not seem altogether off the wall if it had
some moral underpinning, if there were some suggestion on Atwood's
part that though viciousness exists in both men
and
women, neither sex is
ethically exempt. But she has gone out of her way to insist disingenuously
that she is not being "judgmental" in her new novel,
The Robber Bride,
though in it the character of Zenia contains the most extravagantly mon–
strous female Atwood has yet portrayed. "I don't think novels are how-to
books," Atwood told
The New York Times.
"They render experience
rather than provide billboard solutions to things." But how plausible or
honest is the experience rendered in
The Robber Bride?
Zenia is a creature
of such unalleviated nastiness, with so copious a repertory of treachery,
that we would flee in horror - if she bore any resemblance to women
we'd be likely to encounter in the real world of"experience."
As Atwood describes her, Zenia is a sort of endlessly changeable me–
chanical doll, with her breast implants, nose job, and dyed hair. As one of
her victims remarks, "Pure latex flows in her veins." As a fictional char–
acter Zenia is constructed not only of latex but of Gothicized plastic, both
synthetic. She is more laughable than sinister, as scary as a Halloween
pumpkin. Atwood's title derives from the Grimm tale, "The Robber
Bridegroom," about a cannibal husband who devours his wives until a
Scheherezade-like bride outsmarts him with a dream and a story. While
the Grimms' lurid story is genuinely frightening, Zenia the man-eating
destroyer is simply preposterous.
The experience Atwood portrays in this "non-judgmental" novel
consists mainly of flashbacks to the childhood and young womanhood of
Zenia's three principal victims. Tony is a war historian who teaches at the
University of Toronto, Charis is a fey New Age nitwit, and Roz, the
only character of any substance, is a robust, successful businesswoman.
Friends since college, they have all been pushed to the edge by the rapa–
cious temptress who has stolen their men one by one without a qualm,
and then discarded them like used Kleenex. While we are told a great
deal about the three women Zenia betrays, we learn nothing about Zenia
herself beyond the chain of outrageous lies about her life that she has in–
vented over the years. Is this Atwood's way of suggesting that some form
of Zenia is part of all womankind, a projection of their own fantasies? It's
hard to grasp what she's driving at, but one thing is perfectly clear. At one
point of the novel, Roz, unquestionably the brightest of the ill-treated
trio, wails that "she feels as if she's been teleported into some horrible
daytime soap, with hidden iniquities and sinister intrigues and bad camera
angles." Exactly.
